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New iOS Date Bug Can Brick Any 64-Bit iPhone, iPad, iPod touch If You Mess With [video]

Apple’s iOS platform for mobiles has been getting a big jump over the last few years in terms of capability and the functionality that are baked in. Actually the combination of purpose built hardware and software allows Apple to produce a user-experience that usually outclasses most other hard/soft combos on the market. Security-centric? No, it generally doesn’t mean it doesn’t have issues or bugs of its own. Cautions iOS users every time when a new bug surfaces or discovered and today such come to light, and it appears to be a little date and time trick that is at the center of it all. Beware! It can simply put the trick, can brick any 64-bit iOS device it’s performed on. Likely?

It goes a bit something like this; you head on over to Settings > General > Date & Time within iOS, and then change the device’s date to January 1st, 1970 (first set the year to 2000, then go back to Settings, later to Date & Time again and set year to 1970). Going through that process with taht specific date and year will will brick the device. For some reason, it essentially renders the iOS device useless, and we’re actually talking about a hard-brick here, somewhat familiar with the terminology. A state that no amount of restores via iTunes will cure, with the best bet being, to take the whole to the Genius Bar and have the battery disconnected and reconnected. Certainly, we won’t be trying this process on our iPhones, iPads and iPod touch units, and not actually going to risk, neither do we recommend you doing it. Nevertheless, there are some risk takers who have ran through it to confirm, that it is the fact a genuine cause for concern.

Many individuals who fell of the mysterious date issue where under the impression that a simple DFU mode restore via iTunes wuld rectify the issue. Of course, the device can be placed into DFU mode, and substantly restored via iTunes, but even though it simply gets stuck on the Apple logo boot-up screen, and restores to go past that.

Notably, this bug interestingly seems to be haunting iOS devices with 64-bit CPUs only, so in instance, any iPhone, iPad or iPod touch device running with the A7, A8, A8X, A9, or A9X chipset is prone to being permanently bricked. As mentioned earlier, it does not matter what version of iOS firmware you’re running on either.

Theories are plenty behind why this actually an issue. The primary consensus appears to be that, setting the time and date to january 1st, 1970 cause the internal time clock to be less than zero, and further confuses the device forcing it to freak out. Best part and the bottom line is that programming and handling date and times is incredibly complex, and we are speculating it for now on as top priority.

Who said Apple’s iOS platform comes without any issues, recently there aws an iPhone Error 53, followed by iOS 9 slowed down the progression in older smartphones and today tweaking with date and time could result briking the device altogether. What we expect from Apple is to get it right and not put our hard-earned money at risk with this type of ridiculous bug that can be exploited for any ill-intentions by anyone.

For now, we can only expect this iOS bug in date and time to be fixed sooner than later with Apple rolling out a quick software update fix to get rid of this huge flaw in the iOS code.